I'm trying to create a personal/professional website within a college domain. From the university I've requested a static IP address which is directed to this website name: "http://lastname.someuniversity.edu". I would like to setup an Amazon EC2 instance to host a website.

I know how to create/administer the website on the EC2 instance - I just don't know how to get the EC2 instance to talk to the university (and vice-versa). The IT person at the university wasn't terribly helpful.

I'm familiar with how to setup a local machine to run as the webserver but am not sure how to get the Amazon EC2 instance to 'sit inside" the university.

2 Answers
2

From your description, you would need to request that the your domain name, "lastname.someuniversity.edu", be pointed to the static address (Elastic IP address) assigned by Amazon. This would be done with by asking the university's DNS administrator to assign the 'A' record to the Amazon EIP. It is unlikely they would be willing to do this but you won't know until you ask.

A static IP address from the university would only be applicable if the server was managed by the university themselves. Most large organizations prefer to maintain control of their domains.

Your method for redirection would "point" his domain name to the EC2 instance but does the university provide such a site for him? An A record or CNAME as you mentioned both solve the issue as well. In either case the university would need to make a change on their end. Both are valid responses based on the information given by the poster.
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GeorgeAug 4 '10 at 0:13

Sentence-by-sentence: 1 tells the poster something he already knows (need to link the domain name to the IP). 2 provides the only useful content ("assign the 'A' record to the Amazon EIP"). 3 is just wrong (they are willing to do this, they're just not very helpful). 4 is plain stupid - a static IP is 'applicable' whoever the server's managed by, and almost all university manage their servers themselves anyway. 5 simply irrelevant.
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ZazAug 4 '10 at 16:56

@Josh - Your making some assumptions but that's OK. You win, have a nice day.
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GeorgeAug 4 '10 at 18:48

It'll have to be done at the university end using a redirection (either by CNAME or URL). If you have access to files on the university server then just add an automatic redirect using an index.html, something like this: